Progress!

Chapter two is currently about half way done and so far, the course of events that passed through Tarlin's eyes in chapter one have now been illustrated through Zuriel's view. Due to my overzealous amount of description, chapter two is shaping up to be considerably longer than its forerunner; this is good considering chapter one was "short and sweet".

With only a few bullet points left to hit, the rest of the chapter will serve to introduce our two protagonists to each other and to paint a bright, vivid, flashing illustration of the world of Hierarchy. Hopefully, if God smiles on me and the muse is close at hand, the chapter should be finished circa next week friday.

Chapter two update

Apologies for the lackadaisical posting, my mind has been elsewhere this past week.

Chapter two is coming along nicely, but the nature of the scene is forcing me to take things slowly. I'm finding myself struggling with slowing things down enough so that I have a substantial body of description before the main events begin. As I mentioned before, chapter two is, in essence, chapter one from Zuriel's point of view and serves a dual purpose.

Chapter two gives a description of Zuriel in his rawest form; not yet delving too deep into his mind, the chapter serves to illustrate a few of his core principles, worries, thoughts and vices. Along with this gritty introduction, chapter two serves to illustrate the Court from an outsiders point of view. Drafting an in depth picture of the heartwood, chapter two shows just how vivid, showy, and out of place the Court truly is. From the Thuin's point of view the Court is a piece of art, a natural beauty that melds perfectly with the natural world...but to those outside, it's a vivid reminder of the Thuin's alien nature.

Innocence

Over the past couple of weeks, every single 8 am literature class of mine has gone over some poem regarding the loss of innocence. Innocence disappears with time, innocence goes away as we age, certain events in our life causes a loss of innocence - it goes on and on. All of these poems, in essence, have the same message - loosing your innocence is part of growing up; Poe even goes so far as to suggest that the loss of innocence leads to the loss of imagination (I'm not a big fan of this idea).

How does this garble have anything to do with Hierarchy you ask?? Well, not much really but it's intriguing. The whole deal got me thinking about the evolution of an immortal - how do you suggest an immortal ages? If old age doesn't kill you, if disease has no affect on you, how would your body go about physically maturing? It's quite the conundrum actually - and this conundrum directly correlates to Hierarchy.

How the devil am I supposed to craft an appearance for someone who is hundreds of years old but won't ever die? As far as eternity goes, anyone under 1000 had got to be young...hell, if were talking about eternity, then everyone is young! So would that give the character the appearance of a child? Adolescent? Young adult? What a headache.

The gentle kiss of a flame

As I sat in my apartment today, I found myself staring into the little feisty flame burning atop my candle. Transfixed, I picked up the candle and started to play with the flame.

After a few minutes of quickly moving my finger through the little fire, I began to notice that the flame had a peculiar feeling - strange as it was, it felt like it had mass. But how could something like fire have mass? Every time I passed my finger through, it felt like the flame "licked" me - licked me.

Fire has so long stood as a symbol of life, a symbol of prosperity and knowledge - fire is something that man, and man's modern civilization, could never do without. What if fire was actually alive? What if fire, regardless of its shy, coy, and often silent nature, had a mind of its own? Personally, I think something that has stood for so long and so resiliently as a symbol of life must be alive itself. It's often stubborn, not starting when we want it to, and it moves in the wind like a belly dancer on a stage; sounds alive to me. A funny thing fire.

I think fire has just earned itself a special place in the Hierarchy.

Three Spheres

For reasons I have yet to figure out, I found myself contemplating the hierarchy of the angels this weekend. Truth be told, its fascinating.

A friend of mine told me a while back to pick up a book called Paradise Lost, the story of Lucifer's fall and the battle of the Angels - I fully intend to do this soon. Paradise Lost outlines the different stations in the hierarchy of angels, from the "lowly" angels to the high and mighty seraphim and talks about the three different "spheres" to which they belong.

The intricacy, scope, and detail of the angelical hierarchy is stunning. Every single angel has a duty, every angel has reason for being. They play vital roles in human society, serving as guardians, guides, muses....the angels were everything and anything. And they rarely showed (show?) themselves.

Influential? Indeed. Game changing? I doubt it. The hierarchy of angels has given me something to think about, something to research and contemplate while I write, but the Hierarchy won't change because of it. However, it may give birth to some interesting ideas.

Shadow dance

Sorry about the lack of post yesterday - chemistry was occupying my life at the time.

Last night I finished the first "chapter" in Hierarchy. Its only about three pages at this point and a bit rough, but the essentials are there. I plan on going back at a later date and giving it a bit more body, filling it out a bit more, and adding some more dialogue. The chapter is from Tarlin's point of view (as I stated last post) and is a "to the point" chapter. Tarlin's bitterness really comes out here, his angst overflows and his lack of patience is terribly evident. As the general populace losses their minds at the mention of the choosing, Tarlin stares in wonder at there "lemming like" qualities and scoffs at their excitement. Our young Thuin has quite a bit of growing to do.

Currently, I'm starting on chapter two which will be the same scene, but from another view point. Chapter two starts off with Zuriel gazing into the Thuin Court, far away and in an open field. Gazing into the Court, Zuriel waits warily for his sign to move. When the tell-tale "CRUNCH" rings through the air, he knows its time to move and time to move quickly. More descriptive, covering a larger span of time, and from the viewpoint of a more experienced character, chapter two promises far more depth, story, and complexity.

From here on out, posts will occur either when I have a sudden spark of ingenuity, whenever the muse decides to hit me with an idea, or whenever I finish a chapter. They may be few and far between, or the daily blog regime may continue. Only time will tell.

Hit the ground running

Although I'm still struggling with my prologue dilemma, I decided to go ahead and do some writing last night.

The Hierarchy has hit the ground running with action picking up in the first few pages - there really isn't much time to ease into the story before something major occurs. Try as I might, the story wants to take things down a certain road and I'm powerless to stop it. Hierarchy is forcing me to just jump into plot immediately - regardless of whether the books starts with a prologue or in medias res.

Things start off with Tarlin in a meeting of Thuin, preparing himself for his "choosing". The choosing is, in a way, a sorting process that helps the young Thuin decide what element they have an affinity for - it's the major starting point in there magical careers. Everything stays calm long enough for Tarlin's personality to come to the surface, but just as we begin to get into his head there is a sudden avalanche of events that trigger Zuriel's appearance. Within seconds, Tarlin finds himself being dragged out of the conclave, passes out, and finds himself in a cold stone room devoid of light or any clue as to how he's gotten there.

Light the path

So it's been about a week now and already I've found myself struggling with what to talk about. The problem arrises due to the simple fact that delving too deep into the world of Hierarchy would give too much away. Should I start posting pieces of writing? Ideas about how the series will be written? Is it too soon to go into the plot? Should I keep taking you all down the dark road where you can't see the turns, or should I start putting up street lamps? I understand that the dark is somewhat frightening...so maybe it's time for a little illumination.

I was playing around with ideas for starting off Hierarchy and, of course, a prologue seemed like a reasonable idea. I've changed my mind a bit since writing this and I'm considering starting the novel off in medias res - I'll talk about this later. For now, even though it won't make sense to most of you, here is the brief original prologue for Hierarchy:

"The moonlight glinted off of the great lake as Amaros gazed over the castle balcony. A wind blew over the lake sending star studded ripples across its surface; Amaros managed a weak smile as he took in what he knew would be his last night. As a god, he was fully aware of his near future but as a star, he knew that at this point in time he was powerless to change the course of his fate.

According to the scouts, the head of the Hierarchy had been assassinated – eleven hours ago to be exact. He had time yet to live.

As Amaros turned towards his bed a loud crack echoed throughout the halls of the castle – it was like the sound breaking bones…but so much louder. A sudden burst of wind buffeted Amaros from the open balcony sending shivers down his spine. But it was still too early. He should have had more time.

The light in the room began to shift, twist, turn and take shape. Turing quickly towards the balcony, Amaros was greeted with a quick five blows to the chest. Opening his eyes, Amaros found himself prostrate on the floor. As he began to feel his body drain of life, as he began to realize that his body was loosing its God like luster, he saw what he feared most.

Black fire."

An insecure, orphaned, angst-ridden teenage wizard (I mean Thuin)

I don't think anyone has ever created a young orphaned Thuin before - this is going to be big. Maybe an angst-ridden orphaned wizard... but I'm positive there has never been an angst-ridden orphaned Thuin before.

When my buddy and I were in the business of creating characters, we couldn't decide upon a single protagonist - so we made two. I created Zuriel and my compatriot created Tarlin (hat-tip to you Luke). Typical Thuin, Tarlin is long, lanky, lean and unfortunately weak; he's orphaned (of course right?) due to his Thuin nature and harbors a great thirst for the magical world. It's just terribly unfortunate he's so clumsy...and such a chicken. His parents left him as soon as the farm fowl started to lay purple eggs (a side effect of the Thuin magic I suppose) and ran as far away as they could - Thuin tend to stir up quite a ruckus in towns.... something to do with magic being frightening and whatnot.

Regardless of his pitfalls, Tarlin is another cornerstone in the story of the Hierarchy. He is irreplaceable and vital to Zuriel's struggle. Tarlin's journey is one of self-discovery and of pushing past the deepest darkest fears that a sad and unloving childhood can manifest in a young man. Zuriel feels distant, but Tarlin feels familiar - he's a character that everyone can identify with, at least at some point in his or her lives. His anger is justified, but not really noble and full of purpose, and his fear stems from lack of acceptance. He's young, he's lost, and he needs a shepherd - that shepherd is Zuriel.

But that makes you think...what's the point of the shepherd if he doesn't have a flock to attend to?

The Thuin

So in an attempt to make my magicians sound slightly more interesting, I've given them a name - the Thuin.

The Thuin are considered to be an abnormality in humans, a strange phenomenon that occurs very rarely in society. Magic cannot be learned, only inherited by chance. Worthless in any sort of physical battle, the Thuin are weak and slight in stature yet tall and thin like saplings. The magic that fills them eliminates all hope of physical prowess but gifts them with some interesting collateral - doppelgangers. At any given time, a Thuin can create a doppelganger of themselves at the expense of loosing magical power for the duration of its existence.

I'm using doppelganger at this point for the lack of a better word...but don't worry, creativity will strike me at some point and a more appropriate name will surface. Regardless of the lackluster name, the Thuin doppelgangers are actually quite good fighters - used in tight spots where the original Thuin needs a body guard, the doppelgangers provide a limited amount of protection and are usually a last resort.

Now, it really is important to understand that magic is a curious thing - authors throw it about as anything from spells, to books, to the most random and destructive forces created out of a characters will. Magic is hard. Rather than spend countless hours deciding to conjure up an unknown and ridiculously complicated ancient language, I figured I would make the Thuin elementals.

The magical knowledge they posses is already ingrained in their minds, they just have to chose an element and explore it. For example, lets say a Thuin decided to become an elemental of the forest - this particular Thuin would be able to do anything regarding a plant or trees.

However, the downside to the Thuin's magic is that the more they use it, the more like their element they become. I'll use the forest Thuin as an example again - over time, the more and more he uses his magic, the more tree-like he will become. His skin will become gnarled and begin to resemble tree bark, his clothes will start to look more and more like foliage, and he might even survive strictly off of water and soil. Maybe he grows roots? Who knows.

The last subject I would like to touch on is that of light and dark - can light and dark be considered elements? And if they very well could be....will a dark Thuin eventually be absorbed by the shadows? Will a light Thuin rise and shine like a star or become invisible to the naked eye?

It's ironic how the mastery of either element would make you disappear.